What Doesn't Kill You
by Xenophili
Summary: Ever wondered how they all really think? It's time to go into detail about what the characters of Naruto went through as kids to become who they are today. Just what are they hiding about themselves?


People have always made up hopes. Then they make them into concrete things, and call them reasons to keep living. It's an occurrence common enough for even someone like me to notice. They've always made things to believe in, and made something to put into that belief called faith. After that it's all a matter of sticking to it, because the belief they made up told them to, and this is how they would show their faith in it.

Because people are human beings, and as part of this species we all suffer from the same thing. Even the youngest of children would know that they would forever be ill with this human-bred curse. Even if they don't know it, they're thinking about; and if they can't think about it, deep down, they know they'll eventually know, and with their growing age comes the growing anticipation of finally reaching that realization. We just so happened to be that one cell in the beginning of time to want to evolve into something 'great.' So it followed that path, and even at this time there was such a thing called faith. A wordless feeling in the most non-living thing. It evolved as it willed, creating this suffering upon the whole human race it generated as its children. And would you have any idea what that is? The thing that every person currently walking this earth is afflicted with?

Consciousness.

It might have taken me a bit longer to realize this than most others, and come to an understanding of the relationship between this word and Life, but I think it's only because I had no guidance to it. It's kind of hard to find that when I have no parents.

Or relatives.

Or loved ones.

Or even people who acknowledge my existence.

For a while I thought I might have been just an animal. At my tender age, I could at least tell the difference between the intelligence levels of a human being to that of the common stray cat. I used to think I was on the same level of the cat, because in some way, I thought of myself as a stray. I wasn't physically homeless like the poor animals, but I certainly did wander around a lot, like they did, because neither of us actually had anything to do. The connection was made in my mind the difference between a thing that was wanted, and a thing that was not. Strays were strays because no one wanted them. Well, no one wanted me, either. I thought for quite some time that I should also be picking up scraps from garbage cans in dank alleyways and hiding behind poles and running away from every person who tried to come near. For a time I did, until I caught my reflection one day in some broken glass and realized something. I looked like a human.

I had a hairless face like them, and two round eyes. But mine were blue. From all the people that I remember seeing, no one else had blue eyes. I had hair, just on the top of my head like them. Only mine was blonde. There weren't many people with hair that was my color, and even then it was significantly lighter. My cheeks looked normal, but on each one there were marks, like someone had taken three of their long nails and just slashed it across both sides of my face. I began to think, after I had seen those marks, that maybe I really wasn't human, but also I wasn't a cat. I looked like a human, in shape of body and face, but my features were a bit animalistic. I pondered in that moment that maybe I was a species all on my own, and very one-of-a-kind. I put that down as the reason no one cared for me; I was too strange.

But then, in that time of revelations and discoveries, my mind stepped upon something else: It existed. At that time, at the wonderful age of five-and-a-half, I came to realize that I thought. Thinking wasn't a word I knew existed yet, but the concept of it wasn't lost to me. I knew I had some sort of process going on in my head, and I knew the humans had made a word for it; they had for just about everything else. I would just never know how to come about discovering it. That didn't matter to me at the time though, because as I stared at my complexion in that broken piece of glass, with my too-blond hair and my too-blue eyes with my too-tan skin from walking around in the sun too long, I realized that I was in fact a human being. We both had the same needs and walked the same way. Both humans and I had emotions and thought-processes and things we cared about. I was just treated different. At the time I didn't really have something to hold dear, but I certainly loved the concept of it, but you get the point.

I discovered my mind when I was five, and from then on I continued to discover things that others took for granted as being taught to them by people who would like for them to know. Those would be their parents, or other people who loved them. I never had anyone to help me, so one could say I found things out a bit late, and in the time I lived in, not knowing something classified you as stupid instead of ignorant. So while I was going through school alone, with no guidance or training, others were getting everything they needed from home, a concept made up to form a security in the mind.

Every problem that I came across that children naturally do when they're young I ended up having to go through alone. Things like the first time wetting the bed from a nightmare or first learning about your irrational fears and phobias were things I had to make up solutions to on my own. It hadn't left me in the soundest of minds, but I didn't know I was growing up any differently than normal children. I didn't know what I was missing. My resolution for most things at the time was to smile through it; because one time when I was even smaller, I remember someone telling me that if I don't know how to fix something or don't understand it, simply smile and hope for the best, because I didn't look good when I was frowning. The person said I always had a permanent scowl on my face, like I was always thinking too hard or always angry. They said I looked best smiling. I can't remember now who it was, but I have a few sneaking suspicions. So I took their advice and smiled through the toughest situations. I believed that if I did that perhaps people wouldn't think I wasn't so different after all, and maybe even come to like me. That was never the case, and that's what made me come to hate beliefs.

I remember during my first year at school when the kids were teasing me about being an orphan, one of them decided to explain the idea of the boogie-man to me. The child said it lived under my bed, and waited until I was asleep to come out and hurt me. It would grab at my ankles if they hung over the bed, or set up my toys on the floor so when I woke up I would trip over them. I didn't have to worry about those things, though. For one I never had any toys. I was also too small for my age due to lack of nourishment to even think about hanging over the side of my bed, and even then it was on the floor, so there was no place for this 'boogie-man' to hide. But it was still a scare nonetheless. In place of those things I imagined this 'boogie-man' to be inanimate and that it lurked in my corners, simply floating there invisibly, it's evil aura consuming everything, or rather, the little things I had in possession. This is how I became scared of ghosts, be them real or imaginary. The mind is a powerful thing. This also led me to hate children.

From that experience also came the bed-wetting one, and my discovery of irrational phobias. I used to not know what fear was, and if I think about it, there was a point in all people's lives where fear was something unknown to them. It must have been a wonderful time. After I discovered it, however, I completely forgot what it was like to not be afraid, and that in itself scared me.

So from then on I threw caution upon everyone, though I tried hard not to show it, because that would be weird. And I didn't want to be weird. But by doing that I ended up just being even stranger than if I were to just act normally. I was loud and happy as a young child to cover for my own insecurities. My smile almost never left my face, and I never tried to think about anything too complex or into too much depth. I suffered because of that as well, because people thought there was something wrong with me back then since I saw things so simplistically. I never had any crises with my identity because of that, but then again I didn't have one to have a crisis of. Nevertheless, I stuck to my own rule, and thought about there being an alternate reason for people ignoring my existence. It took seven years after I discovered Thought for me to find out exactly why my village hated me so much. And that wasn't simple.

The events that led up to my discovery are things I prefer not to think about, or remember all together. Every now and then though I'll find myself stumbling upon the memory, because it's what set my life in motion. It made me realize just what an Idiot I was for not using my gift as it was given to me. I was an exceptional thinker, and far advanced at observation for my age. I should have been using all these things to my advantage to learn what I could be and should be. Everyone else already knew it, and it was time for me to stop trying to fit in so much. Of course I was still going to try, I was just going to let people see that yes, I could actually be smart and no, I'm not the monster they all thought I was. I knew it was going to take a while and that it wasn't going to be easy since human beings respond strongly to their environment. If everyone hated me, then they would forever think so unless all minds were changed at the same time. That's probably why all the kids hated me. They didn't know the reason why, they just knew that it was the right thing to do. Hate.

So from then on I decided to set goals for myself. I never knew about anything else to do since I never had anything or anyone to do anything with. I grew up with only the necessities of life. Food, water, shelter, and clothes. Love was not necessary. In fact, I only remember hearing that word for the first time at the age of nine, and it wasn't even directed at me. No one's ever said it to me yet, but I'm not sure I care. I repeat it sometimes to myself, and even a few times to someone else in the past, but honestly the word holds no meaning to me. I have never felt love, therefore I don't miss it, or yearn for it, or anything else most humans do. My life was merely straightforward and to the point, and so were my goals. I always imagined myself completing them and being happy that I did. So I would set little goals that were short-term, just to see how it felt.

The sensation was small, but it was there, it was real, and it made me happy. Then I would set another one, and the same feeling would come bubbling up. I felt like I was accomplishing something, and actually doing something right for once in my life. I thought that maybe if I completed these small things people would come to think of me as not so useless, and finally they would like me.

Late one night, however, as I'm laying in my bed on the floor, I allow myself to think. I think about my goals and my accomplishments, about finishing some and making new ones. I think about completing the new ones, only for even more to come popping up. Then I stopped. And wondered. I wondered about these new goals that came popping up. What happens when I finish them? Will more come to pass? And what happens after that? And that? And then what would there be? What if I finish all my goals, and there's nothing left to be done? What will I do? What if...there's nothing left to do? What happens to people when they have finished all they need to in their life? What do they do?

And then I became scared again, because a new concept came to mind. Death. When people are done with all their goals in life, when everything that has to be done is done, do they die? Do all people get to finish their goals before then? Does everyone even die? Are there people who don't? What will happen to me then, if all this comes and goes. Will I die? If I do, then where will I go? I had heard of places that come after death, where souls go to rest. They all seemed like nice places when explained to me, but then I got scared, and I trembled. My eyes started to tear up and my body scrunched up defensively, as if to ward off all these unpleasant thoughts.

Even if there was a place to go after death, I didn't want to die to get there.

So I cried there by myself, all alone in my empty, small, hollow room. I imagined the boogie-man was looming over me, laughing at my weakness and how I was frightened simply by a thought. It just made me hurt even more. I wanted someone there with me, to tell me it was okay, and to explain the things that I didn't understand. I didn't know that's what parents were for, or siblings even, because I didn't have any. I didn't know that was love. I was alone, wrapped up under my thick blanket. Even though it was the middle of the summer and I was sweating, I felt extremely cold for some reason, like I was missing out on someone holding me close.

I didn't want to be alone, and I certainly didn't want to die alone, either.

I came to realize later in life that no one wants to. Because that would have been the nail in the casket. I would have forever thought of myself as the loneliest, most pitiable thing to ever walk the earth. And at the time of my seven-year-old self when I figured this out, maybe I was. Thing is, I just didn't want it. Something in my blood told me that I just wasn't that type of person to accept pity. So I rolled around in my sorrow for a few days after that, contemplating life's hardest decisions. Was it worth it to go on? Was it even worth my bother to get out of bed today? Is there even any point to trying to change people's minds, when they're going to end up dying, anyways? While all my answers to those questions were solid No's, I still found it in myself to go on.

If I was going to be cursed with living I might as well do it right.

So yeah, I might have had it a little harder than most kids growing up, but I had more resolve than them. Why? Because I had been through more. The doubt of my decision to go on still lingers in my mind even today, but it only strengthened me to show myself wrong back then. I had no challengers; no one wanted to associate with me, so I made my own: myself. And while that may sound lame and sad, I was all I had, and I made the best of it. After my bout of depression I came back with something new to me. My smiles might have been on the same level of fake, and children still upset me, I knew more. That in itself made me feel better and more empowered. I was glad in a way that my depression hadn't been the end of me. Because it's kind of funny to be so young and go through depression that intense. I thought I had become stronger.

Someone once said that what doesn't kill you will only make you stronger.

Well, I don't disagree, but I beg to differ.

What doesn't kill you, only delays the inevitable.

I'm Uzumaki Naruto, and this was my story.

_I'll be putting up stories of other people, too, if you all want. I know this was short and a bit rushed, but while typing it I felt like I was saying a million and one things and not really finishing any one thought, and when I went back to edit and re-type, I forgot what I wanted to add._

_So leave a review and what you think, and how you feel on my portrait of Naruto. Because I honestly believe many people take him at face-value. He went through a lot, so what? He's a hero, so what? All that good stuff. I figured it was time for a change, so let me know what you think._

_Review._


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